Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1869 — CURRENT ITEMS. [ARTICLE]

CURR ENT ITEMS.

True sclcntiflfc "Wench weather prophets predict, u winter of unusqaj qevqrtty. VinktaiiD owners in Ydlofcvnrtty, 1 CM.,/ clnlin that they clear SIOO per acre on the grapes. One firm in Montreal has sold tins year raflrc than'two million glass jars to hold preserved fruit. The Queen of Prussia offers SSOO to every woman in the kingdom who has given birth to twelve children. A French expedition is to go to the Mediterranean to observe the meteoric showers in November. Chamberlain, the Labor Convention candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, is a hotel keeper, and only thirty years old. The largest gold brick cast in Montana was made at Helena, September 25. Its weight was twenty-eight hundred ounces, coin value over t 549;000. A Berlin medical journattnentions the death of two men from tricninasis, alter eating raw pork. The butcher who sold the meat was sentenced to four months’imprisonment. At a recent funeral in Ceylon of an ofifc cer a melancholy incident occurred. There was no clergyman at hand, and the service was performed by one of the officers of the brigade. The young widow buried her head in the earth, and cut off all her beautiful golden hair and placed it hi tho grave. A poor couple in London, taking counsel with each other how to retrench their expenses, decided to drown their .dog, a freat pet, but costing seven pence a. week. he wife herself ttoew the animal from the bridge, but his loss preyed upon her miud till she went crazy and drowned herself also in the Thames a week later.. A deplorable event occurred at the recent cattle fairofßoche-Posay (Vienna}/ The oxen, to the number of six hundred,, irritated by tho stings of Insects, broke loose and rushed in all directions; more than one hundred and thirty persons were knocked down and trampled on, and although no. lives were lost, in many cases the injuries received were of a serious naturc. . Under the reign of Isabella a Protestant clergyman hail mauy thousand Bibles printed at Madrid, but was obliged to send them OHt of the country. They would have been destroyed hut for the intervention of the English Minister. They have recently been sent back to Spain, and the Custom llonse at Barcelona has been instructed to let them pass.

There in a horrible story to the effect that when the Cuban rebels daine near capturing Las Tunas tho Spanish garrison set fire to the quartrel, or prison, containing 130 prisoners of war. The quartrel was a wooden building, situated apart from the oity, but surrounded by wooden, slave pens, and the Spaniards are said ;tog have bolted its heavy doors and burned it to the ground with its 180 human victima Two Polish ladies WeVcr recently whipped, savagely, at the Warsaw Police Office. Letters written by Laugiewicz wflree found in their possession, ana the Governor General of Poland ordered them to be flogged as a warning to other correspondents of the famous leader ot tho insurrection of 1803. Despite the pain inflicted on those poor ladies, they did not utter , a single) cry. One of them, however, the Countess fainted away, alter she received the thirtieth stroke. It is hinted that the Japanese colony at Gold Hill, Cal, is much less successful than has been claimed. A correspondent reports that there are but eight Japanese there; that the 140 “soon to arrive,” never have embarked from their native land; that from the several million tea seed brought by the colony, less than 130 plants have been produced, and these In a puny condition; and that only two of the several hundred mulberry trees brought are alive, the dry summer having kitted tho remainder. Dio Lewis’ plan for temperance reform, ns laid down in it lecture at Boston, is as follows: Organize at a public meeting—for example, in a town of rtvc thousand inhabitants—a- oommitte of fifty or one hundred women, who, through a subcommittee, will prepare ah appeal from the women of the town to the dealers of intoxicating drinks. Appeal in hand, the committe will call upon each of the rumsellers, read their earnest, womanly paper, sing a verse, join in a brief prayer, and so pass on to the next. Ten such visits, on ton successive days, will generally leave nothing to be done.

The Jewish Messenger avow r s the belief that the establishment of the Suez Canal is another step toward the fulfillment of the Divine prophecy that the Jews shall return to the land of Palestine. It concludes thus : “In spite of the indifference and lethargy of very many Israelites, and the tendency toward materialism displayed by others, there Is still an undertone of love for Jthe Holy Land which, dormant to-day, needs but tho impulse to bo aroused into action. That impetus may bo given much sooner than the skeptics of to-day would credit. Events are pointing toward it. This .generation may not participate in the return to Palestine, and yet it is possible.” The disappearance of the star Tau Corona; lias excited considerable discussion on the point whether this heavenly hotly has been consumed by fire, or, by increasing its distance from the earth, lias only vanished from the»sight of terrestrial observers. On the latter point it is statod that recent calculations show that the sun and the star Sirus are receding from eaoh other at the rate of 29.4 miles per secodd, and it is asserted that this famous star will gradually become dimmer and dimmer, and will eventually entirely vanish from human sight, unless the power in the lenses of telescopes in time will have been so greatly iiicrewed thjit astronomers will be ajilc to investigate more minutely into the now distant and invisible stellar systems. In a recent address at a fhir, Governor Hoffman, of New York, narrated his agricultural experience as follows: “ Once, when in early life, health seemed failing, a learned doctor advised mo to leave my books, go upon a farm and follow the plow. It was much easier to follow his advice to go upon a farm than to follow the plow alter getting there. I tried it, however. My agricultural labor continued for half an hour. Having put my hand Jo the plow I did not look nor turn IMek, hut pushed forward to the sluide of tho nearest tree anil rested quite content. What grew in live furrows plowed that day I never knew or cared to ask. Satistl.il that my doctor would never have taken his 'own prescription physical powor-was as much wasted as mine was, I converted the plow-share into a- ftshingmd; changed.ajy -physlolou and regained jny health.